Tap Three Times
by RosRua
Summary: Written for Lady of Snark a/k/a Spoiled Sweet in the Get Well Challenge over on House Calls Community  DA . Be sure and read House Calls if you haven't! How cracked dreams become on painkillers! Also, contains a nod to Leafygirl's Lesson In Chemistry.


This is based on a couple of comments LOS and I traded back and forth about both the wonderfulness and the strangeness of drugs – especially painkillers – as she is recovering. This is entirely for your amusement, LOS. I hope it makes you smile - and if you have to laugh hold a pillow over your stomach!

(oh and warning this is _.canon._)

Tap Three Times

Sakura dreamed, and in dreaming she knew everything had changed. Gai had taken on the persona of Jiraya, the famous Toad Sannin. Which meant, wait, that Gai was teaching Naruto and instead of learning his famous Rasengan, Naruto had perfected the Konoha Whirlwind and was wearing green tights?

The sound of her hospital room door sliding open intruded on the confusion of her thoughts and Sakura opened her eyes warily.

"Hello, my blossom of springtime! You are looking more like my cherry blossom every day! I am glad to see the springtime of youth coloring your cheeks again." So saying, Lee leaned down and gave Sakura an impromptu kiss on the forehead.

Sakura's eyes widened in shock. Except that wasn't Lee. It was Lee's mannerisms and that god-awful green suit on a powerful masculine body with extremely blue eyes and bright golden hair.

"I see, words fail you, you are so happy to see me," crowed Naruto. "Or," and here, Naruto's eyes began getting dangerously bright, "has the experimental drug they've been giving you to make you get better also robbed you of your voice? The world couldn't bear to lose such a golden song!"

Sakura knew she'd better say something before the impending flood of tears and wailing began.

"I… I'm fine, Naruto," she managed to croak out. "Thank you for coming to see me."

"Of course I would come to see my blossom!" Naruto said, his voice trembling. "How could I stay away from the love of my life? Now that you're awake, we can continue to plan the union of cherry blossoms and the springtime of youth!"

"Plan the union…?" Sakura's eyes fell on the vase at her bedside, filled with at least twenty daffodils, all fresh. If she had been here that long, someone had been replacing the daffodils regularly. Sakura knew she must be dreaming. Or that Ino had decided to play with her mind in retaliation for the last trick she played on her. Oh, where was Hinata? Her best friend would get her out of here and help her make sense of everything.

…Wait. Hinata was her best friend? Her mind began whirling faster and faster, trying to process the changes to her world that she knew were off but couldn't unravel. The sound of the door opening again made Sakura look up with hope lighting her eyes as Ino appeared, carrying a chart and some decidedly large syringes.

"Hello, sleepyhead. Are you going to obey me this time and stay in bed so we don't have to restrain you again? I don't know why you don't like doctors, we're only here to help you. But every time you have a checkup, you make us come after you, and you won't show up for your checkups after missions. Anyone would think you have a phobia of hospitals!" Ino finished, clucking her tongue dismissively as she began to fill each syringe with a different liquid.

"No, I don't hate hospitals, I'm a med-nin," Sakura protested.

"You? If you're a med-nin, I'd hate to be operated on by you," Ino crowed. "You can use that Sharingen with finesse, but your chakra control is kaput!"

Sharingen? Sakura lifted her hand to her left eye, only to be restrained by a tie. She struggled, unsuccessfully, to calm her rising alarm. She had a feeling that the cocktail Ino had with her would be administered far quicker if she didn't control herself.

"Oh, haha, yes, well, I've been working on that," Sakura rasped.

"And that's exactly what we don't need you doing," Ino stated crisply. "Every time you 'work' on that , you overdo it. If you don't stop that, you're going to lose that Sharingen – for good. And then where will you and Konoha be?" Ino turned to the machine beside her bed, checking the readouts. Turning back to Sakura, her hands began to glow green. "Now, I'm going to just do a little checkup and I'm going to remove your eyepatch and your mask. No need to get alarmed, now," she said as Sakura began to struggle.

"Naruto, help me hold her," said Ino.

"Sakura, blossom, look at me," Naruto pleaded, stroking Sakura's pink hair. "Let Ino examine you. It's for your own good, for the springtime of youth!"

Sakura, looking at Naruto, wondered why his face and Lee's face kept superimposing in her mind. Hadn't Naruto always been like this? No, wait, it was Lee… Then the Toad Sannin's visage swam through her mind and she frowned and jerked as she felt the cool touch of Ino's chakra probing her left eye. That touch should have been probing her brain but she hadn't done anything to be mind probed by a Yamanaka or… a Hyuuga? Her thoughts were all a jumble but she could tell her world was just not right.

"Ino-san, how is Sakura doing?" A light, hesitant voice accompanied by dark hair and pale lavender eyes swam into Sakura's awareness.

Ino sighed, and the green glow left her hands. "Oh, hi, Hinata. How is your cousin doing with his weight loss? He needs to stop eating so many potato chips! Our patient is doing as well, as can be expected, I guess," she continued. "She still thinks she's a med-nin and is married to the Hokage – oh, sorry, Naruto," Ino said as Naruto's eyes began filling again. "Hinata, would you get Naruto out of here? Sakura needs her rest." Ino patted Naruto consolingly on the arm as Hinata coaxed the dejected green clad man from the room.

Sakura sighed. "Okay, Ino, you can stop the pretending. I'm sorry for that nasty prank I played on you last year. You can tell Naruto he can stop acting like Lee, and I don't really have a Sharingen."

Ino regarded Sakura soberly. "Hmmm I think I'll have to report this to the Hokage," she began. "We may have to do a brain probe on you. I'll talk to Sasuke…" Over Sakura's protests, they both heard the door opening and a crisp businesslike voice said, "So how's our patient?"

Sakura's spirits lifted. Kakashi was here! He would help her and get her out of this jam. She had missed him so much. "Kakashi, help me! Tell Ino that I'm fine, and I'm not who she thinks I am!"

The Hokage drew himself up to his full height. "You don't know me well enough to call me by my first name, Sakura," he said kindly but firmly. And then to Ino: "How long has this new development been manifesting?"

"Nearly seventy-two hours, Hogake-sama," Ino said.

Sakura sputtered. Seventy-two hours? Hokage-sama? "Wait, Kakashi, you're my…. Uh…" Sakura couldn't bring herself to say 'live-in lover.' There was no telling what would happen if she let that slip out, and she would have to be more than desperate to do so in any case. So she finished, lamely, "… Hokage."

"That's my girl," said Ino approvingly.

"Ho- Hokage-sama?" A man appeared, in a long black kimono, belted with white and holding a pig. He was chewing a senbon.

"What is it, Genma?" Kakashi snapped. "I thought I told you I wasn't to be disturbed? This had better be good or I will finger-flick you into next week!"

"It's the envoy from Sand, and the nobles. They're demanding an audience and they don't want to wait," Genma finished somewhat accusingly.

Kakashi pressed a hand to his forehead. "They will be the death of me yet. And to think this is all over a cookie recipe exchange," he sighed. "Very well, tell them I will be there in a little while."

Genma left the room holding the pig (Tonton, Sakura's brain supplied, Tsunade's pig). "Wait, what is he doing with Tsunade's pig, and what have you done with Shizune?" She demanded to Kakashi and Ino, whose shared gaze met over her bed in silent understanding.

"Ino, I think it's time," Kakashi's voice sounded stern and final.

"Hokage-sama, you're not going to ask me to do this?" Ino practically begged, fear lacing her voice.

"Ino, you're a med-nin. Sometimes the situation warrants doing things you don't like to do, but that you must do. Do not fail me." With that, the Hokage swept from the room, shutting the door more sharply than was needed.

Silence surrounded Sakura. She couldn't move. She couldn't tell where Ino was, but she assumed that she was readying those syringes with whatever evil concoction they contained to conspire to keep her in this crazy mixed up world. "I can't stay here," Sakura thought. "I will surely go mad, if I'm not already." So she concentrated on the one fact she knew was real. Kakashi was her love and had been for some time. Everything else was skewed like the fun house at the fair in Tokyo. She fell asleep, thinking about Kakashi.

%%%%%%%%

When she awoke, she was in her own bed, with the light gently streaming in through the curtains. Sakura looked around carefully. This was her room, with all of her things in it. The delicious smell of soup wafted in through the doorway, followed by Kakashi, carrying a tray with the soup, a sandwich and a vase with a single daffodil. He set the tray down on the dresser by the door and turned to look at her.

"Good, you're awake," he said, crossing quickly to Sakura to take her into his arms.

Sakura willingly melted into the familiar embrace, inhaling the scent of the soup along with Kakashi's spicy outdoorsy scent. Kakashi's hand stroked her hair, over and over.

"I thought I had lost you for awhile there," he said, his voice cracking.

"What happened?" Sakura asked. "I truly don't remember."

"Tsunade said it was the combination of a nasty fever along with a poison you had picked up on our last mission. You were run down just enough to let the poison get a hold in your system and stay dormant until the fever manifested. You've been out of your head for 72 hours."

"At least that part of my dreams was correct," Sakura said.

"Dreams? Like what?"

"You were Hokage, like the Third combined with Tsunade, and Genma was your Shizune, complete with Tonton. Naruto had been taught by Gai, not Jiraiya, and so he acted like Lee, and was in love with me and talking about the union of cherry blossoms and the springtime of youth." Sakura giggled, remembering. "And Ino was me, a med-nin at the hospital, and I was me, except I had your Sharingen and abilities, and had overdone it."

"Now you know why I despise hospitals," Kakashi laughed.

Sakura made a face at him.

"I'm curious, How did you get back?" Kakashi asked.

"I didn't have any ruby slippers, so I just remembered what was real, no matter what everything else looked like," Sakura answered.

"And what is real?" Kakashi asked, smiling.

"This," Sakura answered by pulling his mask down and his hitae-ate off. The soup was getting cold, but neither one of them minded.


End file.
